Only As Good As The Memories

Raul Julia has charted an unconventional path through film and stage.

His eyes close, his chin lifts and his head tilts back ever so
slightly as a grin slowly raises the corners of his mouth. "A cigar is
as good as memories that you have when you smoked it," says Raul
Julia, his melodious actor's baritone drawing out each word. Eyes
still closed, he runs his hands across his slicked-back, black hair,
then raises them deliberately, palms open and pointed toward the
ceiling, as if in supplication, as he recalls one of the those special
moments: "Whenever I smoke a Punch double corona now, I remember
sitting in a hammock in Boy Scout camp, after a full day of
participating with my son in the camp, taking an hour break, smoking
the double corona and looking up at the trees and the sky. It's not
just the actual taste, it's what's behind it in your mind." His
eyes--the feeling, the emotion, the smile, always come from Julia's
eyes--slowly open, and he smiles broadly. A happy man.

These are heady days for Julia. After a 25-year career of critically
acclaimed roles on Broadway and in major films, the 49-year-old actor
has tapped into Hollywood's big bucks and its star-making machine with
The Addams Family, a re-creation of the 1960s television
series. The movie stunned the film industry in 1991 with $100 million
in box-office receipts in the United States. The sequel, Addams
Family Values, is due out this November, and no one is expecting
any less, least of all Julia.

"I don't mind a megahit," says Julia of the original Addams
Family movie, "I'm grateful that it was, but nobody knew that it
was going to be such a huge success." There is a quick litany of
reasons why he decided to take the part of the patriarch in the first
place, each explanation an attempt to undo an impression that he'd
made the decision for money, not love. It was a comedy. There was the
chance to work with Angelica Huston and Christopher Lloyd--"a
brilliant actress" and a "brilliant actor." And his character, Gomez,
gave him the opportunity to be "as theatrical as I want to be ... he
sings, he dances, he sword fights. I've always wanted to do those
swashbuckling things. It's one of the reasons I became an actor, to do
those things, and I get to do them as Gomez."

The film's basic premise--a dark comedy about the zany Addams
Family--attracted Julia to the script. "It is very unusual. It's a
very well-delineated character by Charles Addams, a very sophisticated
idea about these people who enjoy the gore and the darkness and the
dark side of life. They love being depressed. They enjoy everything
that regular people hate."

The "dark side" description of the film is just countercultural enough
to fit comfortably within Julia's roster of other film and stage
credits that run the gamut from The Eyes of Laura Mars and
Presumed Innocent to Two Gentlemen of Verona and The
Man of La Mancha. Although he's not ready to pigeonhole himself as
a strong-minded iconoclast, throughout his career he has made more
decisions from the heart than his pocketbook.

"Oh yeah, if I had made those decisions, I might have had a lot of
money today. But I don't know if my career would be where it
is. There's a lot of stuff just out there for exploitation, especially
now with the video market. People will rent anything, I mean, 'Virgin
Island Massacre,' 'Starving Sandwich Island,'" he says with a
laugh. "Of course, I don't wait for the perfect script, but that comes
along once in awhile, and you get a jewel like Kiss of the Spider
Woman or The Penitent, or even Presumed Innocent."

Julia left his native Puerto Rico in the mid-1960s and came to New
York with the single-minded purpose of becoming a professional
actor. It wasn't a starry-eyed teenage quest or some last-minute
happenstance created by being discovered by a director in a
laundromat. From his first year in grade school, Julia knew he wasn't
going to study law or medicine in the tradition of his upper-middle
class family. "Instead of acting in court, I decided to act onstage,"
says Julia. But there was already some expression of independence in
Julia's family. His father, who became an engineer, pursued a business
idea--pizza--that he thought of while studying in the United
States. He introduced the fast food to the Caribbean island and ran a
restaurant called the Chicken Inn. And no one discouraged Julia's
affinity for acting.

"I remember I was like five or six years old; I played the devil. That
was my first role," he says, a sly grin breaking out this time. "I
came onstage and I sort of like let go and started having a fit. You
know, 'ooohhh' and rolling all over the stage. My parents thought,
'Oh, my God, what's wrong with him? He's possessed or something.' All
of a sudden, I stood up and started saying my lines. From then on,
that was it. I knew there was something special about the theater for
me ... something beyond the regular reality, something that I could
get into and transcend and become something other than myself."

Although his father was disappointed that Julia wouldn't be staying in
Puerto Rico to take over the business, both his parents backed his
move to New York. "They actually supported me economically for a
year. But then I made the mistake of telling them, 'I don't need you
anymore.' I was making $500 a week playing in Bye-Bye Birdie at
the Dallas state fair and I'm saying to myself, 'I'm set.' Boy was I
sorry." His father took him seriously, and that was the end of the
money. But it also was the end of the work for a time. Back in New
York, Julia borrowed from his roommate when he was broke. "Sometimes
we used to eat once a day ... chicken backs. You could buy four
chicken backs for a quarter." But he never resorted to the usual
starving actor's pursuit of waiting tables. Instead, he taught
Spanish, sold magazine subscriptions and even took a course to sell
pens for a major department store. Finally his persistence paid off.

The Cuban Thing brought the young Julia to the Broadway stage
in 1968. The first of his four Tony nominations resulted from his
portrayal of Proteus in Two Gentlemen of Verona in 1972. His
three other Tony nominations were in 1975 for Where's Charley?,
for his role in impresario Joseph Papp's production of Three Penny
Opera in 1976 and Nine, a 1982 Broadway production. His
many stage credits also include Mack the Knife, Dracula, Betrayal,
Design for Living and Arms and the Man. In addition, he
took the stage in more than a dozen productions at the New York
Shakespeare Festival, through which the actor forged a close bond with
Papp.

"There wasn't one big break," says Julia. "It was like a progression
of things. I did one thing. People saw me. Then I'd do another
thing. I got more recognized." He does admit that the Tony nomination
in Two Gentlemen of Verona was a turning point early in his
career, although he remembers that period more fondly for his
relationship with Papp. "I am very grateful for my association with
Joe Papp, and of course my friendship. We became like father and
son. He saw what I could offer. He didn't look at my ethnic background
or my whatever.... He's sorely missed. He was a great man with a great
vision."

The Papp association must ultimately explain Julia's slow courtship
with Hollywood. He denies that it had anything to do with his
decisions, but at the very least, his close ties to the stage and Papp
focused his time and energy. "I didn't resist [the movies], but I
wasn't eager to get into them, either," says Julia. "I was [in New
York]. I was happy doing theater. I was even offered some things that
I didn't really feel were right for me for a lot of money, more money
than I was making in the theater. Even Joe Papp, toward the end, was
saying, 'Raul, I know you're committed to the theater; you're
committed to the New York Shakespeare Festival, but, you know, think
about doing movies, too."'

He finally took Papp's advice, and even though he still seems to
prefer the stage, Julia also seems increasingly comfortable with
certain aspects of film: "You work for two or three months and make
enough money for two or three years." The financial independence has
given him the freedom to do something during the past few years that
he'd never done before: take summers off to be with his children. He
has two sons, ages six and 10. He's been married to his wife Merel for
17 years. While they are "New Yorkers" most of the year, they have a
house in upstate New York where Julia hides out between projects. He
acknowledges that he and Merel waited to have kids and is now glad
they did.

"I wasn't ready. I wouldn't have been able to ... I don't know, I just
wouldn't have been as good a father as I am able to be now," Julia
says with a very serious, furrowed-brow expression. "Just the fact
that I've lived more, and I'm not concerned about when I am going to
get my next job anymore. This business is free-lance and it's not a
steady job. Younger, I would have been more preoccupied with myself."

Julia's "other" life outside of acting isn't limited to relaxation and
family life or a preoccupation with himself. He's a passionate wine
drinker and keeps a small wine cellar in his home stocked with some of
his favorite wines: a 1982 Château Lynch-Bages, a 1976 Jordan
Cabernet Sauvignon, Vosne-Romaneés from the 1978 vintage and
some other Burgundies, including his favorite: Burgundy from L'Enfant
de Jesus vineyard and some 1974 Vega Sicilia. A 1978
Vosne-Romaneé from the '21' Club cellar provoked a disapproving
mouth pucker and a quizzical look from Julia. "Is this OK?" he
asks. It isn't. A second bottle, this time a Charmes-Chambertin, is
quickly put on the table. "I love these wines," he says, taking a sip
of the second wine. "And you can't hardly miss with these '78s."

Along with his profound love of wine, meditation and a long dalliance
with Werner Erhardt have been key elements in Julia's life. Although
he says he doesn't meditate daily anymore, he does pause "when I'm in
the mood" to meditate. "I just don't force it," says Julia. "We tend
to think of meditation in only one way. But life itself is a
meditation." He also ascribes meditative qualities to cigar smoking,
preferring to call it contemplation. "A cigar is wonderful
contemplation. Meditation is going deeper inside yourself; but
contemplation, while smoking a cigar, you are discovering things. You
can be creative. Maybe it's like becoming one with the cigar. You lose
yourself in it; everything fades away: your worries, your problems,
your thoughts. They fade into the smoke, and the cigar and you are at
peace."

Cigars have been part of Julia's life since he was 20 years old, when
he was still in college and more of a cigarette smoker. "I would smoke
a cigar once in a while, but mostly cigarettes. I was lucky. I just
stopped smoking cigarettes and went back to cigars," says Julia. He
usually smokes one to two cigars a day, with the after-dinner hour
being his preferred time. His favorite is the Cuban Punch double
corona, but he regularly smokes cigars from the Dominican Republic and
he likes cigars from La Gloria Cubana, made in Miami. "My character,
Gomez, in The Addams Family smokes La Glorias. He plays golf
with them sometimes," Julia says.

Cohibas, however, deserve Julia's special praise. "The Cohibas are so
good; I just can't smoke them regularly," he says, his eyes closing
again, and his hand moving to his cheek. "They are so," he draws out
the word and pauses, "perfect." Another pause. "You have to have the
right atmosphere, really be in the right mood to really fully enjoy a
Cohiba. Do you know what I'm saying?" he looks piercingly at his
guest. "I mean it's such a rounded," his hands describe an arc in the
air, perfect taste of tobacco that I feel, wait a minute, it's too
good. Am I being fooled here? It can't just be tobacco. It's so tasty
and aromatic and sweet and everything." The words start tumbling
out. "It's a strong cigar, too. Whenever I feel the right occasion,
the right moment, the right mood; then I'll enjoy one."

There is a certain air about Julia that suggests he is always aware of
the right moment, that he is always ready to appreciate exactly where
he is in life and then make the most of it. Not that he is obliged or
driven to just "do the right thing." Not at all. But when he happens
upon such a moment, he dons it like a mantle and wears it like a
second skin for as long as it takes to explore. Such an outlook, he
argues, has led to decisions to play roles like Archbishop Oscar
Arnulfo Romero, in the film Romero, which is about the life of
the El Salvadoran cleric assassinated by a right-wing death squad; or
Valentin in Kiss of the Spider Woman, a revolutionary
imprisoned on suspicion of terrorist activities. These roles changed
him forever.

Kiss of the Spider Woman, by anyone's commercial assessment,
would have seemed doomed to fail: a film set in Latin America about
political prisoners in a single jail cell, one a homosexual and the
other heterosexual. "No one knew this film would be successful," says
Julia. "We set out doing an art movie. We did it just to work, and
because it was a very special script. It was something I couldn't say
no to. I did it for no money, no salary. We did it because we wanted
to do it. I was so excited about it, I didn't even think about
anything, not the language or the homosexuality, just the human values
that it talks about." He did eventually make some money on the movie
because he had a percentage of the profits.

Romero also was as much a labor of love as a commercial venture
for Julia. "I have a very deep care for Latin America, and, of course,
for what was going on in El Salvador," says Julia. "I have felt
outrage. I have felt anger. And, I have felt
helpless... [Romero ] was an incredible opportunity for me. I
couldn't say no to that. The challenge, a scary challenge, because I
had to interpret a man too many people knew."

In a role that Julia himself describes as his favorite, he becomes
on-screen the pious archbishop who tried for years to separate his
pulpit from the country's political battles, but then stepped forward,
despite the tremendous risk, as an outspoken champion for justice and
human rights. For those who knew the archbishop, Julia's portrayal is
indelibly intertwined with the real man.

"I read his diaries; he used to speak into a tape recorder every
day. I read his bios. I read his homilies," says Julia with an
unmistakable intensity in his voice. "It was a very profound
experience, getting in touch with that part of us, in all of us human
beings, that is committed beyond yourself to the point of giving
everything you have, including your life, for other people, for your
fellow man.

"Thank God for the theater," Julia continues, lapsing into a reference
to the stage to describe the film Romero. "Thank God for this
experience through which you can actually experience it."

It would be easy to take a jab at an actor if he professed to find
greater meaning in dramatic roles, but never ventured into the real
world with his insights. Julia, however, goes beyond the stage and
screen with his convictions. He is a spokesperson for the Hunger
Project, a nonprofit organization with the goal to eliminate global
hunger by the year 2000. "You know that for the first time in history,
we have the means, the knowledge, the agricultural know-how and the
economic resources to end hunger," says Julia. "The whole point of the
Hunger Project is to generate the popular and political will through
education to achieve that goal."

Julia also gives his time and name to a variety of
special-interest groups, such as Youth at Risk, which helps educate
the young about AIDS, and several Latin American human-rights
organizations. He also devotes time to some Hispanic organizations
including La Raza and Nosotros.

The interview is over. Julia strides out of the dining room at the
'21' Club, bending his six-foot two-inch frame a bit to shake hands
with the waiters and the lady behind the cigar counter. He's headed
for a photography session in one of the restaurant's sitting rooms, a
woodpaneled area filled with overstuffed leather chairs and Frederic
Remington paintings that exudes an air of a turn-of-the-century men's
club.

The actor in Julia takes over.

With the help of his assistant of 11 years, Susan Wright, he checks
his carefully combed hair, straightens his elegant paisley tie,
brushes his forest-green-plaid sports jacket and smooths his khaki
pants. There is the remnant of a Partagas Series D in his hand, but he
gives it up without complaint for a Hoyo de Monterrey double
Corona. The monologue begins.

Holding the lighted cigar and posing for the photographer, Julia barks
out in his best huckster voice: "Why pay $100 on a therapy session
when you can spend $25 on a cigar? Whatever it is will come back; so
what, smoke another one." He laughs at his own joke and quickly keeps
the monologue going. "A cigar-a-day keeps the doctor away."

His voice shifts back to its normal baritone. "I even smoke in
bed. Imagine smoking a cigar in bed, reading a book. Next to your bed,
there's a cigar table with a special cigar ashtray, and your wife is
reading a book on how to save the environment." Suddenly, he's into a
fantasy. "I'm reading Tolstoy, in Russian, translating it as I go
along." Just as suddenly, he's back in the moment. "Merel, she loves
cigar smoke."

And then his head tilts back again, and contemplating the smoke
rising toward the ceiling, he's lost in what will surely become
another pleasing memory of a great smoke.